Next week, the European Data Portal (EDP) will publish a new analytical report on Open Data best practices in Europe’s Top Three Performers. This report offers a practical guidebook for policy makers and portal managers towards a successful open data transformation at national level.

There has been a steady increase of interest in open data topics and the learnings from European best practices by national decision-makers across Europe. The Open Data Maturity 2019 Report’s Top Three Performers analyses the success factors that have led to visible progress in some EU Member states, captures the developments in Europe’s most mature open data countries, and provides a useful checklist for other European countries to follow moving forward. With overall scores of 88%, 87% and 83% on open data maturity respectively, Ireland, Spain and France were the top-ranking countries in the 2018 pan-European Open Data Maturity Assessment.

The report aligned its analysis to the four assessment dimensions of the 2018 Pan-European Open Data landscaping exercise: Policy, Portal, Impact and Open Data Quality. These dimensions are elaborated on below. In addition, the report identifies common factors that helped push for and sustain open data development in the three Member States.

The report’s focus on these factors does not imply that only these identified factors can help drive a sustainable open data development at a country level. Mastering a successful open data transformation can be enabled by assessing the applicability of these set of success factors and adapting and transferring them to a specific national context in line with the local specificities.

The Four Assessment Dimensions

Open Data PolicyIn terms of open data policy, the analysis highlights elements such as the strategic vision around open data. This is grounded in a comprehensive policy framework and an inclusive open data governance structure that has guided the successful open data development in Ireland, Spain and France.

Open Data PortalIn terms of open data portal, there are several commonalities that ensured Ireland, Spain and France achieved top positions in the 2018 Open Data Maturity assessment. These commonalities are the advanced features that foster access to data and that enable interaction between users, and a national open data portal that is designed as an access gateway to data sets, tools and editorial content. These features have also successfully contributed to ensuring that the national portal establishes itself as a main point of reference for open data content and data sets at national level.

Open Data ImpactWith regards to the dimension open data impact, aspects such as a strategic awareness around fostering, monitoring and measuring open data re-use, and a targeted focus on developing data ecosystems in thematical domains have contributed to the top performers’ progress. Overall, the report and the yearly assessment highlights the broad re-use of open data stemming from the political, social, and environmental fields. What particularly stood out in the three countries contexts is the strategic awareness that the national level is showing towards the monitoring of open data publication in terms of quantity and quality. The national open data teams have set a clear focus on fostering re-use in the public and private sector and have defined priority areas for open data publication. The top performers also showcase a good understanding of the need to prioritise and foster and monitor re-use within these domains of interest.

Open Data QualityConcerning the dimension open data quality, the three national portals show a systematic approach towards ensuring discoverability, accuracy, currency, and completeness of open data stemming from local, regional and national sources. This is ensured by a mix of automated mechanisms (e.g. validators, check-lists) as well as documentation (such as guidelines) linked via the portal – that support the data holders throughout their data publication process.

Open Data Maturity

With its analysis and easy-to-use action framework, the report will provide a set of recommendations for national decision makers to guide their next open data steps. The report’s findings are summarised in an easy-to-use framework to enable open data success: DEFINE – MONITOR – BENCHMARK.